Prada, the Italian luxury house, is bringing its Prada Mode dining event to Dubai in November, and to mark the occasion, Damien Hirst has been invited to create an installation.
The event will take place at ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai's financial district on November 9 and 10 only, with a site-specific installation by Hirst.
Prada Mode is a travelling event with a carefully curated mix of fine dining, conversation and contemporary culture, and was first launched at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018. Dubai's will be the eighth event to date.
For the site, Hirst is recreating his famous Pharmacy artwork, which made its debut at the Cohen Gallery New York in 1992, before being translated into a fully functioning restaurant of the same name in London in 1998.
The connection between Prada and Hirst stretches back decades, as it was Miuccia Prada who designed the uniforms for Hirst's 1998 restaurant. When Prada took Prada Mode to Moscow last year, Hirst was invited to re-create his fully functioning Pharmacy interior, complete with custom-built cabinets and counters for the event.
Hirst said he was "thrilled and honoured" to be invited to recreate his work for the Dubai event.
The space for the venue is described by Hirst as being “complicated but beautiful", and will see him build a new version of his artwork, tailored to the new space. "I’m so excited to be doing this! I’ve always thought great restaurants can be seen as art, and art without the evidence as we always remember great meals on great evenings with great people in great places and in this way, Pharmacy is definitely a kinetic artwork, that works best filled with people and art existing and living and breathing and eating and drinking and enjoying themselves as one.”
Having previously visited London, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai, the Prada Mode event offers members an opportunity to taste a select menu, while enjoying panels and discussions. Built to facilitate conversations about art and culture, the Dubai event is expected to host a varied schedule.
Hirst rose to fame as one of the Young British Artists of the 1990s, with works such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a notorious 1991 artwork of a tiger shark suspended in a glass tank. He recently hit the news again, when he publicly burnt part of his back catalogue after people bought the NFTs.
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